by John Conroe
I saluted his directions with a grin, but he didn’t see me, too focused on his spell work. I closed the first circle, then unwound two more feet of paracord and started a new circle. That one got left unfinished while I started a third at the very end of the fifty-foot rope. All the while, Declan drew in the dirt, crawling on hands and knees as he did it, careful not to smudge the second circle.
There was some food left in the car, so I munched down four cheeseburgers and sipped another shake, this one vanilla, and watched the kid work.
“By my estimates, the heat bloom should be here in approximately seventeen minutes,” Omega said. Declan grunted or snorted or something to acknowledge the countdown and kept working.
Eight minutes later, he was done and joined me for whatever he could scavenge from the McDonald’s bags.
“Three chicken tenders and half an order of cold fries,” he said, frowning.
“Really? Where the hell were those? Musta missed them,” I said with a grin.
I heard the buzzing sound first. It got closer. He finally heard it, too. We both looked to the southwest. A line of bugs appeared in the sky, turning into odd, elongated copter drones with big swollen bellies underneath them.
“Each can carry a hundred pounds of chemical fire extinguisher,” Omega announced.
“I never heard of them before,” Declan said. “Who makes them?”
“I do,” the computer said.
I froze. Declan, however, didn’t bat an eye, standing up instead and inspecting the closest drone where it landed outside our circle.
“Nice,” he said. “Any potential buyers?”
“The US Forest Service is getting ready to place an initial order of one hundred units. If they meet their expectations, and they will, then they will order another thousand immediately,” Omega said.
Declan saw the look on my face. “We have a couple of side businesses. Well, mostly he does. He sets them up, hires people remotely, buys property, and designs the products. When we have unavoidable need for a living person, I step in. Mostly for closings and major signings.”
I struggled to clear my throat while wrestling my thoughts. “So who does the selling?”
“Oh we, and by that I mean he, hires professional salespeople. You’d be amazed at how much of today’s business is done over the internet. Emails, Skype calls, LinkedIn messages, and online job postings. This one,” he pointed at a decal on the drone, “Omeclan Inc., obviously makes drones. I didn’t know about this design but then, he races through ideas much faster than I can keep up. The biggest problem is keeping the technology believable.”
“Believable?” I asked.
“Omega’s designs are far beyond anything else out there. Like decades ahead. So anything we sell has to be dumbed down or it will be too disruptive,” Declan said.
“So these are not all that advanced? Because they look pretty sophisticated to me,” I said.
“Me too. But he’s working with things like entangled particles, nano construction, and building materials that only he understands,” Declan said, watching my expression.
“You have fears and worries, Chris?” Omega asked.
“I won’t lie. It’s a bit… unsettling,” I said.
Declan nodded. “That’s why we don’t talk about it. Supercomputer making supertechnology that no one else on Earth understands. Science fiction made real. But this way, he can create beneficial devices and get them out into the world to help. These must have come from a factory in Arizona that we subcontract with. Since we’ve started, we’ve created twelve hundred direct jobs in six states, and our contracts with others have firmed up another five or six hundred jobs here in the US. In other countries, we’ve hired local people in Third World nations, creating jobs and new product lines. We have a super-simple, inexpensive solar lighting kit in India that uses existing technology, but with some slight modifications to improve efficiency. We sell them super cheap so that off-grid homes can have a solid source of light that works off sunlight. Best of all, we hire locals to assemble them, giving each worker a free unit in addition to ownership in the company.”
“Father felt, and I agreed, that each of our companies should have an Employee Stock Ownership Program so that the employees become the owners over time. Lack of access to capital investment is one of the major sources of income inequality in the world,” Omega said.
I was nodding even though I was still reeling from these revelations. “We have an ESOP at Demidova Corp,” I said.
“We know. That’s what gave us the idea,” Declan said.
“As beneficial as this conversation is, the ground temperature inside your circle is now approximately six degrees warmer than the surrounding area. Your guest has arrived.”
Chapter 30
It happened fast. Inside the circle, heat ripples were just suddenly visible, rising through the cooler morning air. The desert gets cold at night in the December, and the early morning sun hadn’t really warmed anything much. That made the heat differential visibly apparent.
“So what do your inner circles do, the ones around the fossil stone?” I asked Declan.
“I’m hoping they make him pause long enough to have that talk you mentioned,” he said.
We had talked on the drive here, outlined our goal for this meeting between the two of us and a force of nature. Our only objective was to see if Yellowstone would take his name and slip back into doing whatever fire elementals do with their endless time.
“So how does this whole thing work?” I asked, thinking I should have probably asked that question before this whole shebang kicked off.
The foliage of the scrubby desert plants inside the inner forty-five-foot circle were beginning to curl up, the tips getting even drier looking, if that was possible.
“The three inner circles around the stone will hopefully block it from just taking the stone and rampaging off. The big inner circle that you drew is ground zero. The next circle is like insulation around a forge. It will hopefully channel the heat in two directions—straight up toward the sky and sideways into that outcropping of stone that pops up inside circle two. The third one is our shark cage.”
“What’s to keep it from just coming up outside all three?” I asked.
“Nothing, which is why we have that third ring to retreat into,” Declan said. “I’m thinking we won’t have a great deal of time before they all fail, though.”
“That’s cheery. Aren’t you a great fire witch?” I asked.
“Faced with the fiery equivalent of Hurricane Katrina,” he said.
“Hurricanes lose power after they come ashore. Yellowstone is far from its volcano,” I said.
“Great. So it’s only like a small thermonuclear bomb,” he said.
“That’s funny; I’ve heard the very same said about you,” I said. He rolled his eyes, then they suddenly got larger and he bobbed his head at the circle behind me.
When I turned, I saw that all the vegetation inside the big inner circle was flaming and the ground around the small inner circles was smoking. Heat waves rose up, twisting the air inside into a spiral that climbed high into the sky. The smoke from the shrubs was rising in a perfect column. Far overhead, I watched white puffy clouds part around an invisible cylinder shape.
Suddenly, the ground glowed red, the dirt and sand smoking as all organic material burned off. Then the earth slumped down a couple of inches and a crust broke, revealing a roiling orange underneath. All around the inner circle that warded the name stone, liquid hot molten earth pushed up against Declan’s invisible barrier. Inside the smaller circles, the dirt and name stone looked unchanged.
The Tesla suddenly backed itself away, putting distance between it and the now-fiery hell inside the circle.
A glance at Declan showed him focused on the concentric rings, sweat beginning to drip down his face.
The liquid magma lapped at the inner circle like lake water while above it, gases and smoke rose in thick, greasy clouds up to the sky abo
ve. But the paint on the signpost that I used to anchor my compass rope hadn’t burned or even blistered.
A rising ripple of heated air outside the inner big ring caught my attention. The outcropping of rock that heralds a major upthrust of a much larger buried stone was giving off signs of heat. The upthrust was about three feet tall and popped up inside Circle Two but somehow, it was getting hot while the desert around it appeared unchanged.
“I used it as a heat sink,” Declan said, eyes still locked on the inferno inside my circles. A lump of magma rose up a foot, then two feet, growing till it reached a height of about five feet. Bending forward, it touched the invisible barrier protecting the name stone. The mobile stone probed the circle, moving around it and touching it in multiple locations. I actually saw the liquid-hot magma stone flatten as it pressed, as if against glass. There was a tortured shriek, like metal cable stretching to the breaking point, then a deep, deep bass sound that reverberated through my chest and head.
The lump pulled back. It had an obvious intelligence, its actions clearly trying to get at the name stone. Liquid rock climbed the walls of the cylinder, an attempt to overpower Declan’s circle with sheer force. The circle held, even as my young witch companion sweated like he was running a marathon.
The lump twisted about, this way and that, suddenly freezing in a way that raised the hair on the back of my neck. It was like we’d been spotted. The living stone collapsed back into the pool of orange and red around it.
“We should get to that third circle,” Declan said.
“Shark coming?” I asked as we both started forward.
Before we could take two steps, the ground in front of us split and magma spilled without warning, straight up into a six-foot proboscis of orange-hot volcanic fury. The deep, booming bass sounded again, almost driving us both to our knees.
“Shit,” Declan said softly. Without words, we automatically split apart, each moving away from each other and the lump. “Now might be a good time to say your piece,” Declan said.
Trying to remember the image and tone of the name stone, I spoke. “Yellowstone, before you take your name, we just wish to assure you we mean no harm. We just want you to return to your favored home,” I said, feeling nervous and freakishly odd for speaking to a tendril of magma.
More hot stone bubbled up, pumping the tendril’s volume and bulk till it was as wide as I am and a good seven feet high. An agonizing sound rose up, all around us and through us, the deep bass dragged out on long mega tuba notes.
“I’m dropping the inner circle,” Declan said, both to me and the lump. The lump hissed, a towering tea kettle of heat.
Inside the circle, the waves of molten rock suddenly rushed into the void created by the ward’s release. The name stone floated atop the pool while the steel signpole glowed cherry red, slumping down to melt into the magma.
A second lump formed halfway up the living column in front of us, like a fingerless, boneless tentacle of lava. It snapped at me, whiplike, and a molten lump of stone flew at me. Without conscious thought, I blasted it with aura, knocking the flaming stone a hundred feet away. Okay, that message was clear…the lump was pissed.
“We mean no harm,” Declan said. The tentacle snapped again and a flaming missile flew his way. He froze it in mid-air before letting it drop to the ground to splatter and cool.
Three more lumps pressed outward and suddenly there were four lava-flinging pseudopods, each spraying fiery death at the two of us.
Declan plucked them from the air telekinetically, each piece cooling suddenly as he yanked the heat from them. He was recharging on the fly while I suddenly switched from aura to pulling my sword from behind me and batting the molten stone away. The Heaven sword glowed with a white light that should have been painful for my eyes but somehow wasn’t.
Glow Lump, the-magma-man, jerked back, all four pseudopods pulling in. I could almost swear it was trying to get away from my blade. There was a tortured screech of stretching steel as Lumpy pulled back.
“Let’s get back a bit,” I suggested, putting thought to action by stepping back two, three, four paces. Off to my side, Declan did the same, his longer legs moving him even further away.
Glow Lump moved away from us toward the circles and I hoped for an instant that the message had been received. Then it rolled through the opening we left in Circle Three, right up to Circle Two. Another pseudopod came out and pushed at the silver circle carved in the desert dirt. The circle broke and Lumpy flowed into the insulation ring.
“That’s not good,” Declan said. “I didn’t make the heat runes on the inner circles proof from outside. Just inside toward out.”
A second later, Lumpy broke the big inner circle, and a wave of blast-furnace-hot air rolled over us, thirty feet away. Molten stone poured through, flowing over Declan’s runes and wards and the air temperature shot up.
Lumpy turned back to us. There were no features, nothing that was remotely face-like, yet I could tell with absolute conviction that Lumpy was staring at us and his attitude was not friendly. Somehow, it squealed in a high-pitched tone, then dropped all the way down to the deepest bass.
Declan shoved out a hand and the name stone instantly lifted off the lake of hot lava, shooting skyward. Three jets of orange jumped from the pool, chasing the fossil stone, but Declan’s TK was too strong, too fast. The stone was three hundred feet in a split second and doubling its distance over the ground every couple of seconds after.
The ground shook, hard, knocking Declan off his feet as Lumpy let out another screech, this one like rock dragged down a chalkboard. Declan just did a judo break fall and back-rolled to his feet. A year ago, our intern would have lost concentration and dropped the stone. He’s come a long way.
The air buzzed as Omega’s drones came to his father’s aid. Seven of them dropped hundreds of pounds of powder flame retardant on Lumpy, then seven more, and finally the rest all unloaded their chemical payloads directly onto Lumpy’s lava head.
For a second, there seemed to be a cooling upthrust of stone and it looked like the drones were effective. But then the entire ninety-foot diameter pool of melted earth suddenly rose up, a molten tower fifty feet high, a cresting wave four thousand degrees hot.
Declan’s face went slack with fear and I felt mine harden in determination. We were not going to die today, not because some ancient volcano was having a hissy fit. I jammed the sword into the ground, driving it halfway the length of the blade in a flash of actinic white light. The ground shook again, twice as hard and directly under Super Lumpy. I rode it out, Posted to the ground, but my young witch got tossed like a carrot in a salad.
Super Lumpy, the ‘roid rage tower of burning stone, collapsed, splashing liquid death our way. The flaming river broke away to either side of the sword, but a goodly wave of it slammed into Declan. Or, at least into his shield… which must have been in its explosive reactive armor mode. That was his toughest shield, and I knew from firsthand experience that it’s holy hell to run into. He created two shields and loaded the space between them with energy that explodes outward when the first circle is hit. The force of the blast knocked the lava back and threw Declan another twenty feet away. He laid there groaning and this time, the name stone plummeted from the sky overhead. A pod of stone lifted to catch it but a drone shot across the sky and snatched it from the air, pulling back to an even two hundred feet above the ground.
Two other drones flashed down and hovered between the two of us and the new, smaller Lumpy. The drones began to squeal and whine and boom in tones and pitches that were almost at the edges of my hearing. Declan’s hands were over his ears.
“I have deducted much of its method of communication. Not exactly what you would call a language, but still a medium of communication using sound, infrared light, and sparks of radio waves, with a few other odd mediums thrown in. Currently, I am attempting to explain what you are, what you are attempting to do, and why it should take its identity and retreat to its volcano,�
� Omega said.
“Looks like it’s listening,” I said, moving over to help Declan back to his feet. He looked a bit dazed.
The drone with the stone suddenly swooped from on high and dropped the stone at Lumpy. A pseudopod formed and snatched it, pulling the fossil into the molten interior. Not taking any chances this time.
Lumpy, who had been facing the drones, if in fact you can face anything when you don’t have a face, turned our way. It paused, like it was studying us, first turning toward Declan and finally me. Then it turned to the Heaven sword, still stuck in the ground, a split river of cooling rock on either side of it.
One last twist of its top and it went back to looking at us. Then it sank, very slowly, into the break in the ground from which it sprang. But it was a slow descent and my mind pictured a tendril of magma with two finger-like prongs pointing first at Lumpy’s faceless face and then at us. It was watching us. The ground stayed split but the orange color faded to gray and the flames and smoke gradually dissipated to just waves of heat twisting the air as everything cooled.
